The present invention is directed generally to the furniture art and more particularly to a novel knock-down furniture assembly and the novel components thereof.
Heretofore, available types of furniture have fallen generally into two categories. A first type of furniture, which is provided to the consumer completely assembled by traditional glueing, doweling, and like procedures has become increasingly expensive to produce. Less expensive varieties of knock-down or disassembled furniture have also become available. However, this latter type of furniture has often proven relatively difficult for the relatively unskilled consumer to assemble. In this regard, such unassembled furniture has generally comprised an often confusing plurality of parts which must be assembled utilizing a plurality of different fasteners and mating tools. The consumer may encounter difficulty should any of the necessary fastener components be inadvertently omitted in the packaging of the unassembled furniture. Moreover, the consumer often encounters confusion in the selection of proper fasteners in following the various assembly steps and moreover may lack the appropriate tools for effecting assembly.
Even in cases where assembly has been greatly simplified, unassembled furniture heretofore provided may lack structural integrity and rigidity. Moreover, such unassembled furniture heretofore provided has generally been of a relatively inexpensive variety, often employing inexpensive fibre board and vinyl veneer covering. Such materials generally detract from the appearance of the furniture once assembled as compared to the appearance of traditional assembled furniture. Moreover, such materials inherently lack the structural integrity and rigidity of more traditional hardwoods generally utilized in more expensive furnishings. In this regard, unassembled furniture heretofore provided has generally lacked the variety and selection available in more traditional assembled furniture.
In spite of the foregoing drawbacks, unassembled furniture has a number of advantages over pre-assembled furniture including decrease in production costs to the manufacturer, resulting in part from the elimination of assembly costs and in part from the selection of relatively inexpensive materials. These cost savings can in large part be passed on to the consumer. Moreover, shipping costs are greatly decreased as unassembled furniture may be packaged more densely in less bulky containers as compared to assembled furniture. By the same token, warehousing space may be optimized due to the less bulky packaging requirements. The decreased bulk of the packaging also enables customer pick-up of the unassembled furniture directly from the warehouse or drop shipment to the consumer from the warehouse, eliminating many if not all of conventional delivery expenses of both dealer and consumer.
Heretofore there has been a lack of unassembled furniture which while maintaining most if not all of the foregoing advantages also eliminates most if not all of the foregoing disadvantages.